Are we allowed to ask things like "Is it okay to do [this] without informing users of this behavior?"? I'm not referring to anything regarding the legality of a practice, but whether its just acceptable in terms of business or competition.

If we are, would a question like this need to be CW? I understand ethics vary from person to person, but it'd still be possible for a single answer to resolve the issue.

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Whilst the answers so far posted have been negative and I tend to agree if the question relates, as stated in the body, to whether its just acceptable in terms of business or competition I think there is a class of question where it should be acceptable when it relates more directly to the title: Are we allowed to ask questions about programming ethics on SO?

Some programming professionals subscribe to or are bound by at least one code of ethics or code of practice.

Additionally, many will be covered by ethical as well as legal requirements of their industry.

These remove much of the subjectivity from the discussion (and if not then we need to be reviewing these codes of ethics and conduct in order to improve them). It may still be argumentative but aren't these discussions and even arguments we should be having as professional programmers? It is at least as important as arguments and discussions over what is the best/right/approved/current/modal way to code a solution or furnish a workspace.

This was actually more of what I meant when I originally asked this question. I just used horrible phrasing that kind of got it sidetracked. Sorry I didn't notice this answer until today.
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BrandonOct 21 '09 at 6:20

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Disagree: I think bounding the questions within these codes of ethics makes them good candidates for the programmers.stackexchange site, but until you are asking about also applying them to a specific snippet of code they are still a poor fit for Stack Overflow proper.
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Joel CoehoornOct 18 '11 at 20:43

@Joel - you may well be right ... the alternative site did not exist when I wrote the answer :-)
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masOct 19 '11 at 10:30

I would say that most programmers in the UK are not bound by any of these "code of ethics", as I know very few programmers that consider the BCS to be worth joining.
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Ian RingroseOct 19 '11 at 14:25

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The claim that "Most programming professionals subscribe to or are bound by at least one code of ethics or code of practice" is fanciful. I'd be very surprised if even 10% of professional programmers are more than vaguely aware of these organisations, let alone belonging to them or subscribing to their codes. The ACM claims to be the largest such organization in the world, yet has less than 100,000 members. And I'd bet at least half of thoese members are academics.
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Igby LargemanOct 19 '11 at 15:35

Here in the futuristic future that is October 2011, it may be accepable to ask such questions on Programmers SE (using the neural interface in your flying car). The key would be to determine whether you have a question that is really about programmer ethics, or merely a general ethics question that you happened to think of while programming.